The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon and Beyond—The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World
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—Trip Hawkins
Electronic Arts shipped its first products on May 21, 1983. Of the six products launched, three quickly became bestsellers.
In terms of commercial success, Hard Hat Mack was a bestseller, Archon was a classic bestseller, and Pinball Construction Set was a classic bestseller. It was a really remarkable debut set of products.
We just started cranking out products. The next month we released more, and within six months we had 25 or 30 different products. By that time we were supporting Apple II, Commodore 64, and Atari 800.
—Trip Hawkins
By 1984, the video game industry had collapsed and Commodore 64 sales plateaued. Toward the middle of the year, Commodore started reporting Atari-sized losses, and Apple, for all of its market strength, was not proliferating the way Commodore or Atari had. Shortly after Electronic Arts made its splashy debut, the computer-game industry looked as soft as the video game industry.
It was a really brutal period for the industry. I wouldn’t de-emphasize that. You’d put out a product on the Apple II and be pleased if you sold 15,000 units.
When I started EA, I made a list of all the companies I had ever heard of that made video games or floppy disk games, and there were something like 130 or 131 other companies. Today I would say that maybe 6 of those guys are still in the business.
—Trip Hawkins
During this period, Hawkins abandoned his strategy of promoting game designers. He still treated them with respect and gave them credit for the work they did, but the emphasis at Electronic Arts clearly shifted from popularizing designers to promoting games.
In 1984, that new emphasis led Electronic Arts to place new names on its labels, the names of famous sports figures. Hawkins had a friend who had a friend who knew the agent handling the Philadelphia ’76ers basketball star Julius Irving—better known as “Dr. J.” Using this connection, Hawkins asked Irving’s agent if his client would be willing to let Electronic Arts use his name and likeness in a computer basketball game.
It was the first time a computer game company had licensed an athlete’s name. Though earlier games had been made based on movies such as Tron, Krull, and Star Wars, and Mattel had acquired licenses from the NFL and the NBA, no one had ever approached an individual sports star. Electronic Arts paid Irving a $25,000 fee for his name and image.
Of course, you’d be lucky to do anything today for even ten times that amount.
Anyway, he agreed to do it, making it possible for us to have his agent ask Larry Bird’s agent, why don’t you do it and why don’t you do it on the same terms that we’re doing it?
—Trip Hawkins
The game was called Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One-on-One. Though the game had cutting-edge graphics for the time, the limited processing power of the Commodore 64 and Apple II could only support characters that looked like bad doodles and moved like cardboard cutouts. The people designing the game, however, got several pointers from Irving (Bird was less involved and less interested), which helped them add some finer points to the game.
Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One-on-One was a huge bestseller for its time, leading Electronic Arts to begin work on a game based on another sports legend—John Madden. Though no one knew it at the time, John Madden Football would become the most enduring sports series in computer and video game history. It would also play a decisive role in determining the leaders of two future generations of video game consoles.
A Change at Commodore
The 1965 collapse of Atlantic Acceptance left Commodore with substantial financial problems. Short on capital and tainted by scandal, Tramiel turned to Canadian investor Irving Gould for help. Gould purchased a controlling share of Commodore stock for $500,000.3 Though he later sold 8 percent of his stock back to Tramiel, Gould remained the power behind the scene at Commodore.
According to a few reports, Gould scrutinized Tramiel’s every move. Tramiel could not borrow money without Gould’s signature, and Gould kept Commodore on a strict leash. The relationship was rumored to be turbulent. Fortune magazine once reported that the volatile Tramiel often threatened to quit the company.4
At a Commodore board meeting on January 10, 1984, Tramiel made the threat one final time.
The board had met to discuss the company’s future. Tramiel went to the meeting planning to unveil his dream of bringing his sons together to run Commodore. He wanted to name his oldest son, Sam, as president. He wanted his next oldest, Gary, to run the company’s finances, and his youngest son, Leonard, who had just earned his Ph.D. from Columbia, to work in Commodore’s software division.5
Gould had other ideas. He wanted Marshall Smith, a 54-year-old finance specialist from the steel industry, to take over the company. According to one report, Tramiel threatened to quit the company, and Gould said, “Fine.”
On Friday, January 13, 1984, Jack Tramiel officially resigned as the CEO of Commodore International. On February 21, Marshall Smith moved into Tramiel’s office.
Changing Times at Atari
When James Morgan took over Atari in September, 1983, he found a company in complete disarray. Atari was now composed of dozens of departments that seldom communicated with one another, housed in nearly fifty buildings spread throughout Silicon Valley. The departments’ animosity and political infighting were crippling the company. Alan Kay, the head of Atari’s research center, described the venomous brinkmanship to a Time reporter in terms that made the company’s executives sound like spoiled children playing on a small boat. “For a while the company was playing ‘Ha, ha, your end of the boat is sinking.’”6 In the article, the reporter concluded with the statement that “it turned out that everybody was on the same boat.”
Morgan’s first move was to cut the domestic payroll down from 9,800 employees to 3,500. Next he turned to foreign labor for manufacturing, sending 3,000 jobs to Hong Kong and Taiwan. He also sold off Atari’s excess buildings, condensing the company’s sprawling operations down from forty-nine buildings to four.
A few months into his new job, however, Morgan discovered that he could not turn to Warner Communications for help. When he submitted his 1984 budget in March, Warner executives vetoed it. According to Ross, Atari would have to find its own funding.
Morgan revised his budget, trimming his operating expenses from $600 million to a mere $150 million. He cut an additional 550 jobs, and dumped 20 million old cartridges into the marketplace at $2 each to clear out old inventory.
Realizing that simply cutting expenses would not save Atari, Morgan pushed for new products. On May 21, Atari announced the development of a powerful new game console, the 7800 ProSystem, and a deal to create games with LucasFilm, the company that made the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies.
The 7800 just sort of showed up at our door one morning. It was developed by an outside firm, and I think it was originally called the 3600 or something like that.
—Jerry Jessop, former engineer, Atari
The 7800 had actually been developed by General Computer, the same Boston company that had designed Ms. Pac-Man and made nearly half of the cartridges for the 5200.
In the summer of 1984, Atari announced plans to release a new game controller called the Mindlink. Mindlink was a bizarre product—a game controller that supposedly directed game play by reading electrical impulses in players’ heads. It would come packaged with a Breakout-style title, Bionic Breakthrough.
Companies frequently incur losses while downsizing and cutting inventory, but Warner Communications was completely unprepared for the $425 million second-quarter losses Atari reported in 1984. When Morgan returned to New York, claiming he needed more money to run the company, Ross decided to rid himself of Atari once and for all.
In June, rumors started floating around Atari that Warner planned to sell or close the company. Morgan held a meeting in which he promised his employees that Ross still had confidence in Atari and that he had no plans to sell out. Morgan was wrong.
The Deal
In earl
y July 1984, Warner Communications announced an agreement to sell Atari Corporation to a new owner—Jack Tramiel.
Tramiel did not acquire all of Atari. Warner retained the coin-operated games division and renamed it Atari Games.*
The final agreement was extremely convoluted. On the surface, Tramiel paid $240 million dollars for the home computer division of the failing video game giant. This, however, was only part of the story.
Tramiel and his company, Tramiel Technologies Limited, paid Warner Communications $240 million in promissory notes, based on Atari’s future performance. In effect, Warner had loaned him the money to buy the company.
The deal also involved exchanging stocks. Tramiel Technologies, Jack Tramiel’s company, received warrants for Warner stock and a promise from Warner to cover certain debts and expenses. (That promise proved to be significant. Tramiel contacted Warner on at least one occasion and received a multimillion dollar cash infusion.) In exchange for Atari and warrants for stock, Warner received warrants for 14.3 million shares of Tramiel Technologies’ stock.
Although Warner certainly offered Tramiel good terms for purchasing Atari, the interesting question was why did Tramiel want the company? Atari had good facilities and tremendous name recognition, but within the industry, the company’s name carried negative connotations.
Several analysts believe that Tramiel wanted to use Atari as a vehicle for wreaking revenge on Commodore. While later developments showed that he had no qualms about using Atari to jab at his former company, some of Tramiel’s friends believed that he reentered the computer business for the sake of his sons.
In his book The Home Computer Wars, former Commodore employee and Tramiel confidant Michael Tomczyk suggests that Tramiel purchased Atari to bring his sons and his Commodore family together. Bernie Stolar, another friend of the Tramiels, believed he made the move to ensure his family’s financial security.
Imperial Storm Troopers
Everybody was expecting something draconian to happen. When they first walked in the building, someone got on the PA system and did the line from The Empire Strikes Back. I think it went, “Attention, Imperial storm troops have entered the base.”
—Kelly Turner, former employee, Atari
In the beginning, Atari Corporation and Atari Games were headquartered in adjoining buildings, and the people working in the newly independent coin-op company silently watched as their former associates were demolished.
The Tramiels cared little about soothing nervous employees’ feelings. Jack and Sam Tramiel set up offices, interviewed workers, and decided how to re-align the company. The people who witnessed their takeover described them as tireless, energetic, and merciless. Within a short time, the number of employees on Atari’s worldwide payroll was reduced to 1,500.
Everywhere he looked, Tramiel saw excesses. He had inherited a 300-person marketing division. In contrast, during its heyday Commodore had 25 employees in marketing. Tramiel wanted to reduce the number of secretaries, engineers, and administrators.
I sat there and watched Atari go from 5,000 people in 25 buildings back down to like 200 in coin-op, 200 in consumer in three or four buildings. It was the Tramiel fire sale of Atari.
It was an interesting split. He [Tramiel] had control of his side for probably a day or two before he realized that we were two different companies. Our buildings had connecting doors and they decided to seal them up.
It became a very “us and them” kind of atmosphere, which was too bad. I hated watching the consumer people have to go through interviews because it was a bloodbath.
I was happy to be at coin op.
—Kelly Turner
In typical fashion, Tramiel did not care whom he offended. According to one story, he once stopped a demonstration of existing Atari products by shoving them onto the floor. When a programmer Tramiel supposedly wanted to keep mentioned that his wife had a job, Tramiel told him that his wife should stay home. Offended by Tramiel’s chauvinistic attitude, the programmer began looking for another job later that evening.
We made several successful games for the 2600 and most of the big games for the 5200. When the Tramiels came in, we quickly realized that we were not going to be able to forge a profitable relationship with them, so we started making programs for the Mac.
—Doug Macrae, cofounder of General Computer, codesigner of Ms. Pac-Man
The “Tramiel Fire Sale” was not restricted to the wholesale reduction of jobs. Atari’s new management sent crews to evaluate the company’s assets. Carts filled with computer and office equipment soon lined the walls. Equipment deemed unnecessary was either sold off or stolen. According to one ex-employee, equipment theft reached epic levels.
It’s funny, I was actually in Greece the day that Atari sort of went “tapioca” and was sold to the Tramiels, so I missed it. The way I had it described to me, it sounded like the last days of Vietnam, in which people were pushing helicopters off aircraft carriers so they could get the fighters down, because the fighters were worth more than helicopters. Well, it sounded like the same thing at Atari.
I heard stuff was just flying out the doors and out the windows. If it wasn’t nailed down in the last couple of days there, people were walking out the door and stuffing it in their cars.
—Steve Race, former vice president, Atari Europe Division
On September 13, Jack Tramiel described his plans for resurrecting Atari at a closed-door meeting for venture capitalists in a luxurious San Francisco hotel. During that meeting, Tramiel reportedly told his audience that he planned to build Atari’s sales from $500 million to somewhere between $1.2 and $1.5 billion within one year.7
As the meeting progressed, Tramiel was reportedly asked if he seriously believed that he could keep Atari afloat even through Christmas. He responded that he could and that he planned to release a new line of high-quality, low-cost home computers the following year. Amazingly, Tramiel seemed to believe that he could turn Atari around. Even more amazingly, he convinced several venture capitalists attending the meeting that he could as well.
Axlon, A. G. Bear, and Nemo
I grew up in the New York area. I think I was six or seven when I started going to the movies every Saturday. In high school I was just fanatically interested in movies. In fact, when I got out of high school I decided that I wanted to go to film school and enrolled in NYU. Of my fellow students, the guy who’s become the best known, is Brian DePalma. Marty Scorsese was my cinematography professor.
—Tom Zito, former vice president of Marketing, Axlon Inc.
The Washington Post gave Tom Zito one of the most enviable jobs in America, just a few days after he graduated third in his class from Georgetown University.
The first four years I was at the Washington Post, I was the rock critic. I went to 250 rock and roll shows a year and got every record ever made for free. It was like every kid’s dream! It was great.
After about four years, I went to my editor and said, “You know, I’m out of adjectives. I can’t do this anymore.” I’m partly deaf now as a result of all that rock and roll, but I still love music.
I did that for four years, then there was other stuff that I wanted to do besides write about rock and roll, so I became a general assignment reporter. I covered the first couple of space shuttle shots. I covered Gary Gilmore’s execution.
—Tom Zito
While working at the Post, Zito began writing articles for the New Yorker and Rolling Stone on the side. As video games came into vogue, Zito often found himself writing about the industry.
In 1984, the New Yorker assigned Zito to profile Nolan Bushnell and the video game phenomenon. Bushnell was focusing most of his attention on Sente Technologies at the time. Always gracious to reporters, he showed Zito around, and they struck up a friendship. A few months later, Bushnell called Zito and asked him to move to California and work at one of Bushnell’s pet companies—Axlon Inc.
Axlon was a manufacturer of high-tech toys. The company’s products in
cluded a line of hand puppets called Party Animals that had sensors in their mouths. When you opened their mouths, the sensors activated a little sound chip that produced howls or barks, depending on the animal.
Zito’s first project was A. G. Bear, a mechanical teddy bear whose sound sensor enabled it to mumble in response to noise. The idea was that if children talked to A. G. Bear, it mumbled back to them. Unfortunately, Axlon’s intelligent teddy bear was no match for Teddy Ruxpin, a more articulate talking bear released by Worlds of Wonder that same year.
Interestingly enough, Teddy Ruxpin killed us. When you stripped everything away from Teddy Ruxpin, it was basically a television set for little kids. Kids would put a tape in Teddy and put it on its chair and sit down in front of the chair to watch Teddy tell a story.
We had all kinds of child psychologists telling us how good A. G. Bear was and what a wonderful product it was for kids; but if you put kids in a room with Teddy Ruxpin and A. G. Bear, they’d run in and grab Teddy Ruxpin. I learned this in horror in focus groups….
Fortunately, our first year at Christmas, Teddy was very much in short supply. I think a lot of people bought A. G. Bear because they couldn’t get Teddy Ruxpin.
—Tom Zito
Zito, a bachelor whose family and friends lived on the East Coast, developed a close relationship with the Bushnell family. He visited their home often and thought of their children as nieces and nephews. It was a relationship he valued.